The Good Old Song in the Making (1922 article)
It came into being one memorable night in late October or early November in the year of our Lord 1893. The allusion is, of course, to the first stanza. The other two were the later offspring of an individual's muse, but the immortal first stanza—the only one that anybody knows—was the joint production of a crowd of students gathered at the Union Station that Autumn evening awaiting the arrival from Annapolis of the victorious football team of '93. Previous to the Fall of 1893 football, as played at Virginia, was largely an empirical pastime. We had had fine individual players—such as John Greenway, for instance—but such a thing as scientific team play, as now understood, had not then been dreamed of in our philosophy. Offensive play, aside from individual end runs, consisted for the most part in having a back butt into the line with the ball and then everybody pushing as hard as he could until the struggling tangle of humanity toppled over and came to earth with a dull, sickening thud. And, incidentally, when a man came down in those days he came down hard. The playing field was innocent of anything resembling turf, its surface consisting of adamantine clay liberally studded with small but efficient stones. A cement floor would have offered a rather more inviting place to land. The football season of 1893 opened with an unusually promising array of material which proceeded to play the game as it had always been played at Virginia and without marked success. Georgetown, with a not very impressive eleven, came down and defeated us on the home grounds. Despondency fell upon us. Then, somehow, a fund was raised and Johnny Poe was engaged to coach the team. There may possibly have been finer football coaches than Johnny Poe, but this deponent, for one, can never be induced to believe it. The transformation he wrought in that team of '93 was little short of miraculous. A few weeks after the defeat by Georgetown a return game was played at Washington from which Virginia emerged the victor by the handsome score of 65 to 0. Enthusiasm mounted to a high pitch in the University and fairly boiled over when a telegram from Annapolis brought the glad tidings of a decisive victory over the strong Cadet eleven. Which brings us back to the birth of "The Good Old Song". The team was to arrive on a C. & O. train, due about 1 a.m., but hours earlier the students began assembling at the station and preparing for a royal welcome. Freely mingling with the throng was our late lamented enemy, J. Barleycorn, Esq., who in those unregenerate times at our beloved Alma Mater was wont to be a conspicuous figure on such occasions. And, as usual when John was on hand, the students began to give vent to certain melodies peculiarly adapted to "close harmony." From that point it was but a short step to the composition of new lyrics extolling the valor of the team of '93 in particular and the merits of the University of Virginia and its student body in general. The divine afflatus was hitting crisply on all twelve cylinders and a large number of masterpieces were evolved, among them the first stanza of "The Good Old Song". These were duly rehearsed and greatly appreciated by their composers, but whether anyone actually sang any of them when the train came in it is impossible to say. So great was the din that no particular variety of noise could be distinguished, and it may well have been that the suddenly aroused passengers, trembling in their berths, failed to realize that an immortal song had been born almost in their very presence. Likely enough they were too busy secreting their valuables. After that "The Good Old Song" existed only in the somewhat confused memories of some of the students until shortly before the Thanksgiving Day game that same year with North Carolina at Richmond, when Hon. William W. Old, Jr., of Norfolk, and this deponent, actuated by purely mercenary motives, conceived the idea of collecting such of the fugitive songs as we could remember or dig up, and printing them in a song book to be sold at ten cents per. "The Good Old Song", as we then recollected it, ran thus: "The good old song of Wah-hoo-wah, We'll sing it o'er and o'er, It cheers the heart and warms the blood To yell and shout and roar. We come from old Virginia Where all is mirth and glee. Let's all join hands and give a yell For the team of ninety-three." The second verse was hammered out and printed in the song book along with the original epic stanza in its above form. The next year the last two lines were altered so as to pay tribute to the team of '94, and subsequently, in the interest of permanency, were changed to their present form. The third stanza was written a good many years later "by request" at the time when the movement to bring the alumni back to the University in annual reunions was getting under way. At the time of the events narrated above no great stir was created by "The Good Old Song" nor was it held in any particular reverence for some years thereafter. It was merely sung, along with various other gems of song, at football games and on other like occasions, and no one then suspected it of immortality. When and how it came into its present high estate this deponent knows not and leaves it to other historians to disclose those interesting details. Probably the names of the individuals who contributed from their golden stores to the making of that majestic first stanza can never be ascertained with any approach to accuracy. Certainly no one man should be credited with its authorship. It sprang spontaneously from hundreds of glowing hearts and should be allowed to stand, in its Homeric splendor, a perpetual monument to the collective genius of the student body of '93. Category:Articles Category:1922